~ faith, family and resistance in early modern England

Monthly Archives: May 2015

I’ve decided to write something here about my (probable) ancestor Bartholomew Fowle, who was the prior of St Mary Overy, Southwark, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, even though he was not strictly speaking a recusant – a term that would only really come into use during the reign of Elizabeth I. However, like countless other faithful Catholics, Bartholomew’s world was turned upside down by the seismic upheavals of the Reformation. Moreover, telling Bartholomew’s story seems like a natural sequel to the last post about my 12 x great grandfather Magnus Fowle and his recusant connections. As with my that post, I’ll be drawing on my own original genealogical research, some of which I’ve already published on my family history blog Past Lives.

St Mary Overy, from John Norden’s map of London (c.1593)

Origins

If some sources are to be believed, Bartholomew Fowle was Magnus Fowle’s uncle, the brother of his father Gabriel, who was my 13 x great grandfather. Gabriel Fowle was the master of the Free Grammar School in Lewes, Sussex, which historically had been linked to the Priory of St Pancras, until the latter’s dissolution and destruction in 1537 by Thomas Cromwell. Gabriel died in 1555, during the brief restoration of Catholicism under Queen Mary, and his will is evidence of his loyalty to the old faith, requesting ‘x [ten] preistes yf they can be gott to celebrate & say masse for my sowlle & all crysten sowles’ and leaving ‘my wrytten masse book’ to his parish church in Southover, Lewes.

Gabriel and Bartholomew were supposedly the sons of Nicholas Fowle of Lamberhurst, Kent, who died in 1522, but there is no mention of Bartholomew in Nicholas’ will. This, and the fact that Bartholomew was also known as Bartholomew Linsted or Lynsted, apparently because he came from the village of that name, also in Kent but some thirty miles from Lamberhurst, lead me to cast doubt on the tradition that he was Gabriel’s brother. It seems more likely that he might have been Nicholas Fowle’s brother, and therefore Gabriel’s uncle. However, there is some evidence pointing to Bartholomew’s connection with the family. When another Fowle brother, Thomas, made his will in 1525, he asked to be buried in the church of St Margaret, Southwark, to which he also bequeathed money, despite the fact that his home was in Lamberhurst. St Margaret’s belonged to the priory of St Mary Overy, Southwark, of which Bartholomew Fowle was then prior. Thomas also left money to his ‘ghostly’ – i.e. spiritual – father: might this have been Bartholomew?

One of the sources of information about Bartholomew Fowle’s birth is the chapter on Lynsted in an eighteenth-century history of Kent, which notes that ‘Bartholomew Fowle, alias Linsted, a native of this place, was the last prior of St Mary Overie, London, being elected to that office anno 1513.’ Interestingly, Lynsted was also closely associated with the Roper family, who were linked by marriage with Sir Thomas More: I’ve written before about the recusant Lady Roper of Teynham who lived at Lynsted Lodge in the early seventeenth century.

Some sources give Bartholomew’s name as Lynsted alias Fowle, while others reverse the order. We can only speculate as to why Bartholomew used an alternative surname. Was it a common habit to take the name of your home village, or was it a particular practice among members of religious orders? Did Bartholomew find it politic to conceal his Fowle family connections for some reason, or alternatively did he have a particular reason (a local benefactor or sponsor, for example) for identifying with Lynsted?

Lynsted Lodge, Kent

Leeds Priory

Bartholomew Fowle joined the Canons Regular at the Augustinian priory of St Mary and St Nicholas at Leeds, Kent, about twelve miles south-west of Lynsted and eighteen miles north-east of Lamberhurst, which happened to be one of the manors it owned and one of the parishes for which it possessed the advowson .

Canons Regular were priests living in community under the Rule of St Augustine and sharing their property in common. Unlike monks, who lived a cloistered, contemplative life, the purpose of the life of a canon was to engage in a public ministry of liturgy and sacraments for those who visited their churches. Apparently the canons sought to reflect supernatural order and stability within their priories, with examples of worship, farming, medical care, librarianship, learning, and so forth. The canons often worked in towns and cities, where the worship, medicines, education and the skills of the enclosed Benedictines were not present to the growing numbers of urban dwellers. By the twelfth century hundreds of communities of canons had sprung up in Western Europe. Usually they were quite autonomous of one another, and varied in their ministries.

Augustinian canon

I’m not sure at what age young men and women joined religious orders at that time, but my research into recusant families suggests that it was usually in their middle teens. Even so, this doesn’t help us with determining Bartholomew’s date of birth, since although we know when he left Leeds priory – 1509 – we don’t know when he joined. I haven’t found any records for Leeds priory during Bartholomew’s time there, but two years after he left, Archbishop Warham of Canterbury made a visitation. According to a county history:

Richard Chetham, prior, said that all was well; John Bredgar, formerly prior, was now vicar of Marden, and rarely came to the monastery, but thought that all things were well; and Thomas Vincent, sub-prior, said that much had been reformed, but much still remained to be reformed by the prior and sub-prior. […] Besides the eight canons already named there were twelve others, making a total of twenty in addition to the prior.

St Mary Overy

Bartholomew Fowle transferred from Leeds to the priory of St Mary Overy at Southwark in 1509, the year in which Henry VIII came to the throne. Presumably this was a promotion of some kind, but if so, it wasn’t yet to a senior role in the community, since that would not come until 1513, four years after Bartholomew’s arrival in Southwark. According to one source, Bartholomew Lynsted alias Fowle was elected sub-prior in January 1513, but there is a suggestion that he was promoted again to prior very soon afterwards, perhaps as early as February in the same year. Robert Michell had been prior from 1499 until his resignation in 1512, when he was succeeded by Robert Shouldham, whose term of office appears to have been less than a year.

Southwark church and London Bridge in 1616

According to oral tradition, there had been a church in Southwark, just south of London Bridge, since before the Norman Conquest. In the early twelfth century it was re-founded as an Augustinian priory, dedicated to St Mary, and became known as St Mary Overy (‘over the river’). The canons created a hospital alongside the church, the direct predecessor of St Thomas’ Hospital and originally named in honour of the martyr St Thomas à Beckett.

We know very little about Bartholomew’s time as prior of Southwark, which coincided with the tumultuous years of Henry VIII’s reign. We do know that he was present at an important chapter of the Augustinians in Leicester, on Monday, 16 June, 1518, when one hundred and seventy 1 joined in the procession, of whom thirty-six were prelati or heads of houses. According to one account:

As night came on they adjourned till Tuesday morning at seven, and when they again assembled, the prior of Southwark, with every outward demonstration of trouble and sorrow, appealed for a stricter and verbal observance of their rule. His manner and address excited much stir, but he was replied to by many, particularly by the prior of Merton. On the first day of this chapter a letter had been read from Cardinal Wolsey observing with regret that so few men of that religion applied themselves to study. On Wednesday, the concluding day of the chapter, Henry VIII and his then queen were received into the order.

Sources claim that Bartholomew Fowle was ‘a very learned man’, and not just in matters of religion. He was the author of the book De Ponte Londini in which he popularised a tradition about the origins of London Bridge, subsequently repeated in Stow’s Survey of London. According to one source:

In the early part of the Saxon times there is no notice of any town or other place on this spot ; but a tradition of Bartholomew Linsted, or Fowle, Iast prior of St. Mary Overie, preserved by Stow (Survey of London, book i, chapter xiii), notices that the profits of the ferry were devoted by the owner, “a maiden named Mary,” to the foundation and endowment of a nunnery, or “house of sisters,” afterwards converted into a college of priests, by whom a bridge of timber was built, which with the aid of the citizens was afterwards converted into one of stone.

In 1535 the annual value of Southwark priory was declared to be £624 6s. 6d, with its rents in Southwark alone realising £283 4s. 6d. On November 11th of that year there was a great procession by command of the king, at which the canons were present, with their crosses, candlesticks, and vergers before them, all singing the litany. However, if this was a sign of royal favour towards St Mary Overy, it was to prove shortlived.

Dissolution

In 1531, following the dispute with Rome over his plan to divorce Queen Katharine, Henry VIII had declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. Five years later the king, through the agency of his chief enforcer Thomas Cromwell, began the process of suppressing the country’s religious houses and appropriating their property. According to Wriostheley’s Chronicle for the year 1539:

Also this yeare, in Octobre, the priories of Sainct Marie Overis, in Southwarke, and Sainct Bartholomewes, in Smithfield, was suppressed into the Kinges handes, and the channons putt out, and changed to seculer priestes, and all the landes and goodes [escheated] to the Kinges use.

The priory of St Mary Overy was ‘surrendered’ to Thomas Cromwell’s agents on 27th October 1539. Cromwell himself signed the pension list, which granted £8 each per annum to two of the canons and £6 to nine others. There were eleven annuitants in all, besides the prior, with their pensions totalling £70 in all. At least one source claims that Bartholomew Fowle quibbled over his original grant of £80 per annum and managed to have it increased to £100. In addition, Bartholomew was provided with a house ‘within the close where Dr Michell was dwelling’. Robert Michell was the last prior but one before Bartholomew, and had probably resigned due to ill health or old age. (A certain William Michell, almost certainly a relative, had witnessed the will of Thomas Fowle of Lamberhurst in 1525.)

Montague Close, Southwark

In 1545 the priory buildings and grounds came into the possession of Sir Anthony Browne, and there were complaints in the manor court of Southwark that he had opened a public bowling green in the close and was allowing gambling there. Although he was a staunch Catholic, Browne remained a close friend of Henry VIII and became the owner of a great deal of former monastic property. His eldest son, another Anthony, was created Viscount Montague in the time of Queen Mary. It seems probable that Lord Montague lived in what had previously been the house of the prior of St. Mary Overy and utilised the other buildings for stabling and so forth. He died in 1593, leaving to his wife, Magdalen, his mansion house of ‘St. Mary Overies,’ for her life, with reversion to his grandson Anthony.

The area around the former priory buildings became known as Montague Close and, as I’ve noted before, it would become a notorious refuge for Catholic recusants, under the protection of the Browne family.

Later life

There is evidence that Bartholomew Fowle remained in London after his enforced retirement, and also that he continued to serve as a priest. For example, in 1543 Dame Joan Milbourne, the widow of a former lord mayor of London, bequeathed money in her will to a number of priests to come to her burial at the church of St Edmund, Lombard Street, and to pray for her. She left the sum of £6 13s 6d ‘to my very good friend Bartholomew Linsted some time prior of St Mary Overies, to pray for my soul’. From this, we can conclude two things: firstly, that Bartholomew Fowle was well connected with the gentry of London, and secondly that, despite the religious changes of Henry’s reign, Catholic practices such as prayers for the dead remained popular.

The date of Bartholomew’s death is unknown, and I’ve failed to find any trace of a will, but a number of sources confirm that he was still receiving his pension in 1553. In other words, he lived for at least another fifteen years or so after his expulsion from St Mary Overy. This means that, like my ancestor and his relative Gabriel Fowle, Bartholomew may have lived long enough to have his hopes revived by the brief restoration of Catholicism under Queen Mary.

Nave of Southwark Cathedral (Anglican)

As for St Mary Overy, in time the priory church would be renamed as St Saviour’s (my 9 x great grandparents, Magnus Byne, rector of Clayton-cum-Keymer and Anne Wane, were married there in 1640), before becoming the Anglican Cathedral of Southwark in 1905. A Catholic cathedral – St George’s – was dedicated in Southwark in 1848.

This website had its origins in my curiosity about a reference to the Langworth family in the will of my maternal 12 x great grandfather Magnus Fowle, a yeoman farmer of Mayfield, Sussex, who died in 1595. My ancestor’s will includes a rather hostile comment about his neighbour Arthur Langworth, brother of Dr John Langworth, the ‘church papist’ whose religious sympathies I discussed in the previous post. This animosity might lead us to conclude that Magnus Fowle did not share the Langworth family’s well-documented Catholic sympathies (three of Dr Langworth’s children, for example, married into knownrecusantfamilies). However, another brief reference in Magnus’ will paints a rather different picture, and in this post I want to take that as a starting-point for discussing another prominent recusant family with links to my own family history. In doing so, I’ll be drawing on material already published on my family history blog, Past Lives.

An old map of east Sussex (Ashburnham is at bottom right of the image)

The very first beneficiary named in Magnus Fowle’s will turns out to be the most intriguing: ‘I give to Elynor Ashbourneham the daughter of Mrs Isabell Ashbourneham Twentie Shillings in gold.’ The Ashburnhams were an ancient Sussex family, associated with the village whose name they bore, which was near Battle and about fifteen miles from Magnus’ home in Mayfield. The Isabel Ashburnham mentioned in Magnus Fowle’s will was almost certainly the widow of John Ashburnham who sat in Parliament for Sussex in 1554. Isabel was the daughter of John Sackville of Buckhurst in Kent. John and Isabel Ashburnham had six children, of whom the Eleanor Ashburnham mentioned in my ancestor’s will was the fourth. Apparently she died unmarried. Intriguingly, after her husband’s death in 1563, Isabel Ashburnham spent her later years in Lambeth and in 1584 was buried at St Mary Overy in Southwark, a church which had powerful associations for my Fowle ancestors. Bartholomew Fowle, said by some sources to have been the brother of Magnus’ father Gabriel, was the last prior of the Augustinian house at St Mary Overy at the time of its dissolution in 1539. I plan to write about Bartholomew in another post.

St Mary Overy, Southwark, by Wenceslas Hollar

It would appear that the Ashburnhams remained loyal to the traditional Catholic faith, at least initially, despite the upheavals of the sixteenth century. John Ashburnham junior, the son and heir of John and Isabel, and the elder brother of Eleanor, had an accusation of recusancy laid against him in 1574. By 1588 he had amassed so many unpaid fines that his estate at Ashburnham was sequestered by the Crown and later farmed out by Queen Elizabeth to her master cook, William Cordell. It was only recovered when John died and his son, another John, who presumably did not share his father’s religious scruples, became head of the family. The estate was forfeited again during the Civil War, due to the family’s support for the King, but returned to them at the Restoration. (Ashburnham House was eventually sold off and partly demolished in the 1950s. It’s now a Christian conference centre: I remember spending a weekend there in the 1970s). I wonder if it was the family’s loss of their estate that prompted Isabel Ashburnham’s move to Southwark, and perhaps Magnus Fowle’s generous gesture towards her daughter? The question still remains as to why a yeoman farmer was leaving money to a member of a distinguished gentry family. At the same time, I can’t help wondering whether Magnus’ association with the Ashburnhams indicates that he shared their religious principles. Although we know that his father Gabriel, a master at the Free Grammar School in Lewes who died in 1555 during the reign of Queen Mary, remained true to the traditional faith, I have no evidence that Magnus was a recusant. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t sympathetic to those who were brave enough to risk all for the religion of their (and his) forefathers, especially if there were long-standing links between the two families, perhaps connected with their shared patronage of the priory of St Mary Overy. The preamble to Magnus’ will provides few clues to his religious affiliation. Certainly there isn’t the appeal to Mary and the saints that we find in his grandfather’s will, but neither is there any sign of the sole dependence on the Passion and merits of Christ that we find in those of some of his more ardent Protestant descendants. Instead, there is a simple evocation of the Trinity, which Michael Questier claims was often a feature of Catholic wills at this period.

Ashburnham House, before its partial demolition in the 1950s

The recurrence of similar names in successive generations of the Ashburnham family, together with contradictions between the available sources, can make understanding their story confusing. So it’s probably useful to begin with a simple account of their journey through the turbulent sixteenth century. William Ashburnham died in 1530. Since his son John (1), who was married to Lora Berkeley, predeceased him, William left his estate to his grandson, another John (2), who was born in about 1528. It was this John Ashburnham who married Isabel Sackville and served as Member of Parliament for Sussex under Queen Mary. John (2) and Isabel Ashburnham had five children: John (3), Thomas, Anne, Margaret and Eleanor – the latter being the beneficiary of Magnus Fowle’s will. Eleanor’s older brother John (3), who was born in about 1545, inherited the family estate on his father’s death in 1563. It was this John (3) who was accused of recusancy in 1574 and, because of unpaid fines, had his estate sequestered by the Crown in 1588. He married Mary Fane and they had six children: Katherine, John (4), Thomas, George, William and Mary. John (3) died in 1592. His son, John (4), seems not to have shared his father’s religious principles and successfully recovered the family estate. He married Elizabeth Beaumont, Baroness of Cramond and was knighted.

Sir John Ashburnham (1593) by Hieronymus Custodis

Or, to put it more simply:

William Ashburnham (1) died in 1530

John Ashburnham (1), son of William, married Lora Berkeley

John (1) and Lora had a son – John Ashburnham (2) (c. 1528 – 1563) – who married Isabel Sackville (1545 – 1592)

John (2) and Isabel had these children:

John Ashburnham (3) (1545 – 1592)

Thomas (1549 – )

Anne

Margaret

Eleanor

John (3) married Mary Fane – they had these children:

Katherine (c. 1570)

(Sir) John (4) (1571)

Thomas

George

William

Mary

The names in bold are those referred to in the Recusant Rolls – see below. It’s also helpful to see events in the Ashburnhams’ family history in the context of key national events, as in this timeline:

c.1528 Birth of John Ashburnham (2)

1530 Death of William Ashburnham

c.1544 Marriage of John Ashburnham (2) and Isabel Sackville

1545 Birth of John Ashburnham (3)

1547 Death of Henry VIII – accession of Edward VI

c.1552 Birth of Eleanor Ashburnham

1553 Accession of Queen Mary 1

559 Death of Mary – accession of Elizabeth I

1563 Death of John Ashburnham (2)

1568 Marriage of John Ashburnham (3) and Mary Fane

1571 Birth of (Sir) John Ashburnham (4)

1584 Death of Isabel Ashburnham

1592 Death of John Ashburnham (3)

I’ve managed to find the names of various members of the Ashburnham family in the Recusant Roll for 1592. According to one source:

The rolls recorded the punishments and fines of those who refused to conform to the Anglican doctrine. After 1581, recusancy became an indictable offence, so recusants often appear in Quarter Session records and the fines levied were recorded in the Pipe Rolls. After 1592 a separate series of rolls called Recusant Rolls was created which continued until 1691 (previously recusancy was recorded in the Pipe Rolls). The Rolls could include other dissenters or nonconformists and show the fines and property or land surrendered by the accused.

1592 was a critical year for the Ashburnham family. It was the year in which John Ashburnham (3), who had inherited but then forfeited the family estate on account of his recusancy, died. His death offered the prospect of the estate being returned to its owners, once John’s son and heir, John Ashburnham (4), conformed to the state religion.

I’ve obtained a copy of the Recusant Roll for 1592. It’s written in legal and abbreviated Latin: I took Latin ‘O’ Level some forty years ago, so my knowledge of the language is a little rusty, but with the help of a dictionary I’ve been able to make some sense of the document. The Roll is organised by county, and in the section dealing with Sussex I’ve found two long passages which appear to detail the sequestration of the estate of John Ashburnham (3) and its occupation by ‘Willelmus Cordell magister coquus coquine domine Regine’ – William Cordell, Queen Elizabeth’s master cook – and (I think) its return to the Ashburnhams on John’s death.

There are two brief references to Eleanor Ashburnham in the Recusant Roll. In the first ‘Ellionara Ashburneham’ appears in a list of recusants fined £40. Eleanor’s name comes after that of one Eleanor Parker, a spinster of Willingdon, a village about fifteen miles south-west of Ashburnham; she is said to be ‘de eadem’ – of the same – and also a spinster. There is a similar reference a few pages further on in the document. The first list in which Eleanor’s name appears includes three other members of the Ashburnham family: Mary and Katherine Ashburnham, both said to be of Ashburnham and both spinsters, and William Ashburnham of Dallington, which was about five miles north of Ashburnham. Mary, Katherine and probably William were all the children of the recusant John Asburnham (3) who died in 1592. Clearly, they did not share the desire of their brother John (4) to conform to the Church of England, but instead maintained their father’s recusant principles.

There is a reference elsewhere in the document to a William Ashburnham of Ashburnham, but I’m not sure if he is identical with William of Dallington. There are also two references to a Thomas Ashburnham, who is probably another sibling of Mary, Katherine and William, but it’s also possible he was Eleanor’s brother of that name, who is mentioned in their mother Isabel’s will of 1584.

To summarise: we know that in 1592, three years before her name appears in Magnus Fowle’s will, Eleanor Ashburnham, the unmarried, middle-aged daughter of John and Isabel Ashburnham (she was probably about 40 years old at the time), was fined for holding fast to her late brother’s recusant principles. She was joined in this by two of her nieces and at least one of her nephews, and perhaps by her own brother. It’s worth noting that Eleanor’s nephews and nieces would have been in their late teens or early twenties at the time. They were all born in the reign of Elizabeth I and thus represented a new generation determined to hold on to the faith of their ancestors, despite the increasingly heavy penalties for doing so. If Eleanor Ashburnham was still being fined £40 on a regular basis three years later, when Magnus Fowle wrote his will, it makes his bequest to her of ‘Twentie Shillings in gold’ more understandable. It also makes it more likely that Magnus was sympathetic to Eleanor’s religious stance, even though he felt unable, for whatever reason, to adopt that stance himself and face the legal consequences.

The Vale of Ashburnham, by JMW Turner

I’m not an expert on Tudor history, but what I’ve read in the works of Eamon Dufy and other writers on this period makes me wary of assigning definitive religious identities to my sixteenth-century ancestors. When Magnus Fowle was writing his will, the separation from Rome under Henry VIII, the brief restoration of Catholicism under Mary, and the renewed separation under Elizabeth, were fairly recent memories. Magnus would have been baptised a Catholic, married in a church that was officially Protestant, perhaps christened his children in a restored Catholic ceremony, and was buried in a Protestant churchyard – and it’s perfectly possible that all of these ceremonies occurred in the same parish church. The divisions between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ identities were yet to harden, and the character of the separated ‘Church of England’ was still in the process of development. A (growing) minority identified themselves as proudly Protestant, and on the other side the recusants, like Eleanor Ashburnham, were defiantly Catholic. But most people, whatever their sympathies, probably kept their heads down and quietly conformed to whichever religious regime was currently in power. As we’ve noted in earlier posts, there were many at this time who were described as ‘church papists’ – that is to say, people who attended or even, like Dr John Langworth, officiated at services of the official Anglican church, in order not to attract heavy fines or other penalties, but secretly maintained their Catholic faith and practices. I wonder if my ancestor Magnus Fowle was one of them?